Just returned this morning from Miami to Edinburgh via Heathrow and it has to be one of the worst ever travelling experiences I've had. It was an A380 for the Miami leg and probably the worst legroom I've had. I couldn't believe this was the flag carrier's flagship aircraft. Also lacking in amenities compared to Delta. At Heathrow and Edinburgh, they also often use buses to get to the plane. I'm fine with that on EasyJet but I'd expect a bit more from a flag carrier. Then there are constant delays and they lost our bags on the LHR-EDI leg to boot.
Delta has an unusually large seat pitch on their long haul aircraft. The seat pitch on the BA A380 is the norm for long haul economy on most of the world's airlines.
I won't be choosing to fly them again in a hurry - what's the point in flying the domestic routes (except Aberdeen & Ireland or if you were connecting from another flight) when the train is just as fast? And Delta offer a much better transatlantic product. And at least in mainland Europe, EasyJet & Ryanair are cheaper.
Because they're cheaper and more reliable than the train in many cases. Using a real example I found a few weeks ago, a day trip from Newcastle to London arriving before 10am and leaving no earlier than 5pm was half the price on BA (£80) compared to what LNER wanted to charge for the exact same date (£160). The ECML is unreliable and the 800s uncomfortable, BA on the other hand whilst maybe not so punctual (although southbound from Newcastle first thing is rarely an issue) at least it usually operates and is reasonably comfortable, throw in the cost factor too and it becomes a no brainer to fly.
BA are on many occasions the same price as or sometimes even cheaper than easyJet and Ryanair. The low cost carriers don't sell all their seats for £20!
Long Haul seems variable, I understand they are updating thier seating. The A380 they admit themselves is overtaken by competitors offerings, which is actually hurting them more in the premium cabins. In have seen articles about the backwards facing business class seat bieng "Prisoner class". Even Premium Econonmy between Virgin and BA, Virgin make you feel slightly better as a customer in my experience then BA. BA have some serious fault in my experience with customer service, it is very possible that my expectations are too high as they compete in the race to the bottom. Ryanair on the other hand expectations are low so your are rarely disappointed. When I was living in Scotland, my main preference towards BA on long haul was that once you had landed you were in the UK and could drive home if something had gone wrong. In Amsterdam / Frankfurt (and the many other places you can connect in Scotland) you are stuck there until they can get you another flight out.
The A380 should be getting Club Suites in the next couple of years.
I can't disagree there, I once had a flight from London - Edinburgh that BA cancelled because of "high wind" - I took a trian back to Edinburgh. All they would offer was a refund of my airfare and reference to the "out of the airlines control" for not paying anything else. They said it was my choice to take the train as they would have booked me on a flight the following day (but no hotel was offered because of lack of availability) I asked how did EasyJet manage to land at Edinburgh using the same equipment (A320) at the same time as the Heathrow flight was due to land, surely EasyJet wouldn't put thier customers in danger. On that evening although it was windy in Edinburgh, it didn't seem to impact the airports operations. That to me was another reason to avoid BA on London - Scotland, BA seem much quicker to cancel everything very quickly, granted it is probably to protect the long haul traffic, but at least EasyJet do tend to keep flying.
There's two likely reasons here. One is that the Captain refused to take the flight because of the weather, they have got the authority to do that and I have noticed that BA pilots are generally more cautious in that regard than their counterparts on other airlines, I remember a few years ago my BA flight to Newcastle being diverted to Teesside despite Jet2 and TUI (or Thomson as they were back then) both choosing to continue flying into Newcastle.
The other is that the flight couldn't operate for another reason (ie crew shortage) and BA were able to blame it on the weather to get out of their compensation obligations.
BA prioritises their long haul operations out of Heathrow in my experience, so if there‘s issues the first flights to get cut are the domestic ones as they know customers have alternatives. This can be a pain if you’re northern/Scotland based and are flying them via Heathrow. It is far different to the likes of Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 as their main business model is point to point within Europe so they want to operate those flights as its their main source of income. It’s for that reason I’d rather fly a budget airline out of a Scottish airport if it’s short-haul and I will only go places for leisure that are served directly.
Not strictly true, whilst it does have some influence it's usually done based on load factors, the flights that are quieter are the ones they'll axe first when they can as that means fewer people to compensate and rebook. The other regular victims are those flown by 787s as there's a maintenance backlog with those at present. The Tokyo route especially seams to be suffering at present.
The a380 isn't its flagship. Where have they ever stated its their flagship and if it was, why are they putting the new business class seats in the 787 and 777 first ?
Exactly. BA haven't had a flagship since Concorde was retired.
BA's Terminal Five is so poor that BA has increased the minimum connection time between flights there from 60 minutes to 75 minutes. Reported by Simon Calder at
https://www.independent.co.uk/trave...connection-time-london-heathrow-b2474807.html
So after 16 years of operation it's worse than it used to be.
He also points out the minimum connecting times for international-to-international flights at other airports:
Presumably it's been bad for a while now, and by making the change BA is reducing the ££££ it has to fork out to people who miss their booked connections.
It does ultimately track back to T5 but not in the way one might expect. The issue is aircraft leaving T5 late as ground handling isn't up to scratch, the result is aircraft arriving at their destination late, not having enough time to turn round so departing late again and then returning late to T5.
A significant factor however is beyond BA's control, that being security. Security at T5 is a slow and inefficient process that's been continuously declining over the past few years.
One thing that doesn't help is the cost-cutting design of T5. It's clear that the budget began running out as the satellite terminals were being built - both T5-B and T5-C have stands without a jetbridge, and others with near 300 yard walks along a series of jetbridges, all because the terminals weren't built out to their full length. Then there's the unbuilt T5-D which instead just plays host to a series of remote stands.
5B and 5C were always intended to have remote stands at the ends, that wasn't a later budget decision. 5D was never a firm plan and simply something that passive provision was made for.
At least BA use proper buses at Heathrow with a normal number of padded seats, unlike those foreign airports that cram 100+ people on those god awful COBUS things that have about four plastic seats (and then still don’t move off for five minutes after the vehicle is fully loaded for no apparent reason.)
Last time I had a remote stand at Heathrow ( landing back from Hamburg in autumn 2019 ), BA put us on a bus that was packed solid with many more standing than seated.
Did at least manage to get next to a window, so managed several decent photos as we were driving towards the terminal ( despite the tight anti photo mesh covering on the windows...
)
The use of Mercedes Citaros rather than COBUS vehicles is part of the reason why they're so packed. But it shouldn't be an issue if things worked properly as there's a large number of Citaros dedicated to T5. The issue is that it doesn't work properly.
COBUS vehicles aren't exclusive to other countries, Newcastle airport has them too although it's incredibly rare to get a bus gate on BA there.
) but you might get somewhere if you take the matter to Alternative Dispute Resolution (CEDR).
